Republicans Against Flatter Taxes

[T]he Republican Party’s opposition to taxes is no longer based on any recognizable economic theory and appears impervious to all efforts to design taxes that respect the policy reasons that conservative economists have traditionally given for resisting tax increases. A lot of people have hypothesized that Ryan, in being more policy-oriented than many members of his party, is more aware of the need for higher taxes than many members of his party. What we’ve learned in recent months is that that isn’t true: He’s just better at developing complicated rationales that make increasingly extreme positions sound like garden-variety policy points.